Coatings science represents one of the best examples available of the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. The organic chemist must provide polymers, solvents, and many of the additives used in paint formulation. The organic chemist also must provide some of the pigments. The inorganic chemist must also provide pigments and extenders. How these components come together to form a paint and how that paint may be successfully applied to a surface is the realm of the physical chemist. The metallurgist is very much involved in making receptive the metal surfaces onto which coatings are placed. The cellulose chemist similarly has a contribution to make where wooded substrates are involved. The physicist is involved in the colour considerations associated with coatings, and one would be remiss to omit from this list, which admittedly is not complete, the empiricist. Many of the observations on which paint technology is based have been made empirically and to this day are without complete scientific basis. It is for this reason if for no other that scientific studies in the paint industry are extremely important.
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1 February 1978
